Jury Whacks Stanford Exec for $50 Million

DALLAS (CN) – A federal jury ordered a former Stanford Financial executive to pay $50 million to the receiver of R. Allen Stanford’s $7 billion Ponzi scheme for breaching her duties to Stanford’s Antiguan bank. Court-appointed receiver Ralph S. Janvey sued former Stanford Financial treasury manager Patricia Maldonado in 2014 in Federal Court. The seven-member jury unanimously concluded on Oct. 2 that she had breached her fiduciary duties to the Stanford International Bank Ltd. and that “a relationship of trust and confidence” existed between the two. Janvey, an attorney with Krage Janvey in Dallas, said Maldonado “failed to comply with those fiduciary duties in connection with numerous improper transfers from SIBL’s customer deposit accounts, including transfers of more than $200 million to fund a secret Swiss bank account that Allen Stanford and James Davis ultimately used to pay bribes” to authorities, according to an Oct. 7 statement . After three hours of deliberations, the jurors concluded the business judgment rule did not protect Maldonado’s actions. The common law rule allows courts and juries the option of deferring to the business judgment of company executives. Stanford, 65, was convicted in 2012 in Houston Federal Court of selling phony certificates of deposit to fund the $7 billion Ponzi scheme. He is serving 110 years in federal prison. Janvey has filed about 50 lawsuits against Stanford money recipients since his appointment, according to the Courthouse News database. His targets have included the Tiger Woods Foundation, the Miami Heat basketball team, Texas A&M University, the University of Miami, the PGA Tour and the ATP Tour. In September, U.S. District Judge David C. Godbey in Dallas ordered several Stanford investors to hand over $2 million in profits they received in the scheme. Godbey relied on a Fifth Circuit ruling that allowing net-winner investors to keep their profits would “further the debtors’ fraudulent scheme at the expense of other” investors. The Fifth Circuit concluded that any recovery would be paid out of money “rightfully belonging” to the victims of the Ponzi scheme, not from the Stanford entities’ own assets, “because they had no assets they could legitimately call their own.” In February, a Dallas federal jury ordered former U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Peter Romero to return more than $700,000 in fraudulent transfers from Stanford entities.